WASHINGTON — President Obama’s
aggressive Inaugural Address on Monday presented Congressional
Republicans with a stark choice over the next two years: accommodate the
president’s agenda on immigration,
guns, energy and social programs and hope to take the liberal edge off
issues dictated by the White House, or dig in as the last bulwark
against a re-elected Democratic president and accept the political risks
of that hard-line stance.

The gun lobby is focused within the Republican Party, but Democratic
lawmakers have also been to blame for failing to pass meaningful gun
regulations. Already, some Democrats who should be strongest on gun
controls are showing familiar signs of weakness.

Senator Pat Leahy, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, will be
needed as a leader in this effort but has been mumbling about the need
to hold extensive hearings. And Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader,
was making ominous, cowardly remarks over the weekend about tailoring
whatever the Senate does to what he thinks could get through a House
dominated by the far-right fringe of the Republican Party. He has
started to wriggle away from the idea of an assault weapons ban, for
example.

And in other reporting the Times noted yet another plot twist in their West Wing episode - the Keystone pipeline is back and Obama needs to figure out how to duck it again:

WASHINGTON — The governor of Nebraska on Tuesday approved a revised route through the state for the Keystone XL pipeline,
setting up a decision for President Obama that pipeline opponents say
will be a crucial test of his intentions on climate change.

Uh huh. If we don't take the oil Canada will sell it to China, so the impact on global warming of turning away this pipeline will be roughly zero. Still, liberals progressives will howl, so what will Obama do (other than blame Boehner and Bush?). Maybe another dramatic speech? Stay tuned...

Comments

Whatevs when it comes to the NYT. Let them convince President Tiger Beat that he is a rough and tumble OG political gangsta. It will accelerate his hubris and overreach and help us make the case in 2014 that he needs to be checked by an opposition Congress.

daddy:
My husband loves that movie.She received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance.
I will watch the House hearings because they have to be better than the Senate's The Dem gushing was sickening and I did mute the tv when dems were speaking. Have I said lately how much I love Rand Paul? Firing is too good for her. I like the tar and feather idea.

US Supreme Court on Monday turned aside a petition from the Republican National Committee to lift a 30-year-old consent decree. The decree requires the RNC to refrain from tactics that could suppress voting rights.

Are you still a member of the party of racists?

In urging the high court to examine whether the decree is still warranted, lawyers for the Republican Party said the arrangement had become onerous for the RNC.

“The ability of the Republican Party, as one of two national political parties, to conduct effective election observation programs is of national importance,” Bobby Burchfield wrote in his petition to the high court.

He said statutes in 21 states permit political parties to engage in “poll watching activities for the purpose of detecting and reporting fraud.”

DNC lawyers argued that the high court should allow the consent decree to remain in place. Evidence presented during the 2008 and 2009 litigation over the decree showed that the order is still needed today, they said.

"As to Ladka’s question about who turned down the Benghazi security requests and why, Obama reportedly told him that “releasing the individual names of anyone in the State Department would really put them at risk,” Ladka says. "

TK:
I disagree. We can write the campaign ad right now.
We know fraud occurred in 2008 and 2012. Democrats will always lie or cheat to win. Be diligent with military votes and take out full page ads in states that don't meet deadlines emphasizing the ones that blew it in 2012.
I am still incensed about Hil's comment
"What difference does it make? It was the only time she lost her cool and looked GUILTY as sin.
Frau: You are absolutely correct in your assessment of Hillary's "Liar's High". That is exactly what it was. The Faux indignation just screamed through the tv screen.Love Ron Johnson too! We need a woman to filet her . I am counting on House members to take her to the cleaners.Can you imagine how she will try and ridicule Biden if he decides to run?She tried to look presidential today. Epic fail. Sorry DUDU. Your princess doesn't pass the smell test.

TK, Asking again, where would one go, what would one do as a total outsider?
There is no where else. Either one works to make the Republicans better or one tells the Democrats they have complete control of the US with their Anti American beliefs: there is no other choice, IMO.

you guys need to come back to reality. You lost the election -- got crushed in the presidential. Lost the popular vote in the house. Why don't you guys try winning elections first instead of throwing tantrums and threatening to default the country?

TK: Obviously when you can't win elections you start suppressing the vote. Even republicans are admitting they are purposely suppressing voters (c.f. Condi Rice, Colin Powell).

Did you think it was appropriate at the Funeral service for the murdered Ambassador and the 3 other murdered Americans, that Vice President Joe Biden asked a grieving parent of the deceased, "Did your son always have balls the size of cue balls?"

daddy:
And you will be correct. However, the press tried this already with Paul and failed misreably. Johnson stands on his own . They won't find any dirt there. Today is a big black eye for Obama. I am still waiting for someone to ask this question:
" Did Obama downplay Benghazi so he could win re-election?" I already know the answer from the progs but I just want thenm to know that we know that is why Rice lied.

TK; Future elections are not going to turn on some lame contract. Future elections will turn on getting the truth out about dumb prog ideas, getting GOOD candidates to run and hiring smart honest journalists like Breitbart to expose hypocrisy, lies and evil doing of libs. We can't do it as a divided house. " A house divided against itself cannot stand" I want success in 2014 and 2016. Turning tail and running away is not the answer. Please don't call me a jerk or get mad at me.

I think that soundbite of Hillary's is going to come back and bite her on the arse.I can just hear Hannity now with a rant about what a big difference it does indeed make for everyone.
Her tears today reminded me of New Hampshire after she lost the Iowa caucausses. She is as fake and phony as they come.

Won the house in 2010 and 2012; won enough governorships and state legislatures in 2010 to control the redistricting process in a majority of states. And those district boundaries will remain unchanged until after the 2020 census.

TK:
We need you in the Republican Party. It is not feasible or sensible to form a new party. Please come back. We can all join forces and defeat the evil that surrounds us. We are down but we are not out.
Schummer is gloating today about the Repubs decidsion on the debt ceiling, literally mocking us in a Politico article. We shall see how long he continues his mockery. We are going to get a budget and then CUTS in SPENDING. I can't wait to see Bammy's Mad face again when he throws a tantrum and doesn't get his way.Africa is blowing up in his face and he is dancing at an Inaugural.

The House on Wednesday passed the "No Budget, No Pay Act," a Republican bill that would effectively defuse the debt ceiling threat for several months.

The bill would let the Treasury Department borrow new money until mid-May. In exchange, the legislation would require lawmakers in both chambers of Congress to pass a budget resolution or have their pay withheld until they do.

The vote was 285 to 144, largely on the back of Republican support (with 109 Democrats voting against).

That bite will only be heard by the church choir and repeated. All the infidels, agnostics, heretics (IOW's the low information voter and democrats) will never hear it because it is already spiked. But then again the MSM may think this was an "heroic" moment and lead with it. Now that I think about that is most likely what will occur under that rubric of heroism.

"Take Prince William County in northern Virginia, which was recently identified by The New York Times as the poster county for the Obama Majority. In 2008 and 2012 over 160,000 voters turned out to give Obama identical 16 point margins over John McCain and Mitt Romney respectively. But in 2009, when Obama was not on the ballot, only 75,000 voters turned out to vote in Prince William and Republican Bob McDonnell crushed Democratic Creigh Deeds by an even higher 18-point margin. Then in 2010, again with no Obama on the ballot, 91,000 Prince William voters turned out to vote and they voted for Republican House candidates by a 52 percent to 46 percent margin."

How is that going to be done from outside the organization? What is one to threaten the GOP with. Threaten to vote for a political party that works every single day to kill more American children, a political party where every single member lies about every thing, I can't do it.

I believe in NOTHING the Democrats and/or Communists believe in and would not support them for anything.
I will stay a Republican.

Then last week when the dems were glowing in the Beyonce lipsynch, rep legislators inVa passed a redistricting law that hurts the dems...I might consider that bad form, but after the way Obamacare was passed and the WI Dems tried to block a majority vote there,--it's perfect.

JIB:
I don't think shouting "What Does It Matter on live C-Span is something that Fox news is going to let die. I challenge all conservative radio stations to tell their listeners that Hillary Rodham Clinton thinks it is ok to lie to the American people about what happened in Benghazi. In essence that is what she said and we have the video and audiotape. Get an RNC ad ready to go pronto. This how the dems do it.
Come on Ileana, bring her down.

Eliot Engle (D-NY) -
The Dems just want to paint this as how to make things better in the future. More money, more meetings, ...
They aren't treating this as a questioning of what happened in Benghazi.

Dems don't answer questions at hearings, because there's no penalty in avoiding them. The last time a Dem was skewered in a hearing was when the Clintons offerred up as a fall guy that hapless kid who photocopied the FBI files for Hildabeast. the only reason the media gave that play was because Dem Tom Lantos told the kid he should kill himself (basically), and the kid just about started crying for his mommy. Repubs bring up Dem gross negligence that gets people killed (benghazy, F&F)? no public penalty paid for that by a Dem. As long as the dem sticks to the script-- taise taxes, raise spending-- the gangster organization gives them a pass.

matt, the Pantsuit was just doing what Slick has always done: Deny, deny, deny. He and Carville made talking nonsensical gibberish into accepted political discussion in the 90s complete with Orwellian ruminations on the meaning of the word "is" and other flights of ignorance on which they never get called. The Repubs have been negligent on figuring out a way to counteract this. In fact most of the Repub Senators this morning should face primary challenges just based on being ill prepared to handle their responsibilities. They're almost as much of the problem as the donks are.

I'll see what they do, but we're going to do that [auditing the campaign] at Heritage and we're not just going to do an analysis of other pols. We're going to go out and do our own research. I know you can't just ask people what they think, unless you give them cues. Like, what do you think of the word conservative. You can ask them if they call themselves conservative or not. 40% call themselves conservative, but you don't know what the other 60% think about it. They may not like the word, but they may be conservatives.
I just see, looking at the political handling from the Republican side is so amateurish compared to even what I was doing in marketing fifteen years ago, before I came to Congress. And the ability is there to be so much more sophisticated in targeting markets, segmenting and communicating with them individually.

And from the interviewer:

Talking to DeMint, its clear he wants to aggressively build out this infrastructure, building an almost alternative structure to the GOP. If he succeeds, the question of whether or not the RNC can reenergize itself may be irrelevant.

Don't be surprised that the MSM treats it differently than Fox will - by protraying her as a heroine for shouting down the right wing attempt to impugn the integrity, guts and courage of our hard working Reset Button Operator.

--TK-- please start your own independent political party blogsite. This is tiresome in the extreme.--

I'm dubious TK's strategy has any chance of success, but his disgust with the mass of wimps and DC leeches known as the Republican party is hardly unique to him nor unjustified.
Nor is he trying to start an independent party; he's trying to wake the GOP up and reform it.

Now, he is somewhat repetitious but what's a little OCD among friends?
Besides, I hear Paul Revere was a little repetitious too.

Yet here we are with the majority and a Republican Speaker, so let me adopt the Democrats' new slogan and say, "What difference does it make?" Or is is, "What does it matter?" Works either way.

As for the GOP caving on the debt ceiling . . . again, What difference does it make? For quite some time now we're been living inside a giant global sovereign debt and derivative bubble, and the "consensus" has been that we could keep on inflating that bubble indefinitely. Unfortunately as I result I think we've reached a point where to stop pumping air into the bubble now will have the same disastrous consequences as continuing on as we have been, spending and QE-ing and inflating away until the bubble pops. So either way: DOOM.

Wouldn't want to be living in a gun-free zone, inside a blue hell city when that happens, though. Just saying . . .

I'm a proud registered INDEPENDENT. The USA has a federal 'winner take all' election system, and legislative majorities are formed by cumulative seat winners from those winner take all elections. Unlike parliamentary systems, In the USA single issue or other narrow parties only hurt the cause they espouse by stealing winner take all votes away from the major party closest to their cause. The Dems suppress independent runs by employing top down gangster-style rules of party discipline. their voters are fine with that. Conservatives voters won't tolerate gangsterism, so the Repubs have a tougher time keeping their voters happy-- and party discipline is far more difficult. Anyone is free to deny that reality, and start a Nativist POTUS Eligibility Party (NatPoEP) and steal a few-- a really smallnumber of votes from Repubs-- which of course gives those votes to Dems. Because that's a worse than useless exercise, I find it tiresome.

And I have changed my position on the consent decree as well.
As I read it and as it is worded it should be of little consequence.
But in the real world, if the GOP feels it's enough of an impediment that they have to go to court, including appealing to SCOTUS, to try and get it overturned then who am I to argue with the guys who have to deal with it?
It must be harming them or why go to court?

The next time the Dems control the House/Senate/WH-- they'll pass open borders, mandatory union employment, double the minimum wage and double taxes on the "Rich", PLUS pass a Budget Resolution that increase "Base Line" spending to 30% of GDP. NONE of these will EVER be completely undone. If some 'conservatives' had their way, this would all happen in January 2015.

The House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs rules, 113th Congress, adopted January 15, 2013

6.Witnesses
(a) Interrogation of Witnesses
(3) Subject to paragraph (4), each Member may interrogate the witness for 5 minutes, the reply of the witness being included in the 5-minute period. After all Members have had an opportunity to ask questions, the round shall begin again under the 5-minute rule.

Did someone just ask about bringing the bad guys from the Libya attacks
to justice. Sounds like the Algerian military
already did so.

"Several Egyptian members of the squad of militants that lay bloody siege to an Algerian gas complex last week also took part in the deadly attack on the United States Mission in Libya in September, a senior Algerian official said Tuesday."

This has been a difficult week for the State Department and for our country. We’ve seen the heavy assault on our post in Benghazi that took the lives of those brave men. We’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful internet video that we had nothing to do with. It is hard for the American people to make sense of that because it is senseless, and it is totally unacceptable.

Interesting ...Rep.Chabot said the documents sent over from State were a giant mess. Duplicates, not chronological,...just a big mess document dump.
It has been delay, delay, delay with the State Dept. from the get-go.

Back a bit to the original topic - not quite sure what Harry Reid is up to right now. I think that he and other Dem Senators who represent states with large and vocal gun rights populations would do better if gun grabbing legislation doesn't make it to the Senate floor. He may have counted votes on the Judiciary Committee and be fairly certain that there aren't enough votes to get it to the floor.

Until recently, I lived in NW Nevada, and it is one of the most gun friendly places I have ever lived (though I see more open carry in Montana). Remember, this is the state where you can rent and shoot most any machine gun made, all the way up to, and including, the venerable .50 M2. And, Reid himself inoculated himself from Sarah Palin's bus trip to his hometown of Searchlight by meeting with the NRA at a shooting range in Las Vegas.

Probably the worst thing that could happen to him would be if the legislation got to the floor, and Dems from gun rights states were forced to vote for it. That might just cost him his majority position in the next election, as Dem Senators, formerly with high ratings with the NRA, find themselves defending their votes to take guns and magazines out of the hands of their voters.